"Gathering' to celebrate "60s hippie heyday hits

August 11, 2001|By JOHN TERLESKY Special to The Morning Call -- Freelance

The term psychedelic '60s has been marketed to the point of losing any real meaning. Despite the passage of 30-odd years since the Summer of Love faded into the Winter of Coming Down, and the resultant backlash against seemingly naive hippie philosophies, the psychedelic '60s still have meaning for some who yearn to rekindle that time's spirit of oneness and self-expression.

It's that way for Ray Manzarek, former organist for The Doors, a band whose sustained popularity three decades after its demise manifests the continuing resonance of those revolutionary times.

Manzarek, 61, and his hippie-era brethren want to musically re-create the '60s-style joy of discovering new possibilities at this weekend's Gathering on the Mountain, a yearly event held at Big Boulder Ski Area in Lake Harmony. There, the music of the late-1960s will be celebrated with performances by 10 blasts from the past, including rock legends Jefferson Starship and Iron ("In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida") Butterfly on Sunday and former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman (he plays with his jazz/blues band the Rhythm Kings) on Saturday.

Manzarek will be master of ceremonies for "Spirit of '67 Tour" portion of the event Sunday, which includes, in addition to Iron Butterfly and Jefferson Starship, Big Brother & the Holding Company (Janis Joplin's old band) and Quicksilver Messenger Service. Manzarek will play a short solo set.

Manzarek has expanded his activities far past the realm of his Doors heyday to include producing albums for the punk/roots band X and performing with with beat-era poet Michael McClure. But the keyboardist's basic feelings about the era remain remarkably close to how they were way back when.

"I suppose people who weren't there, the generations after the psychedelic generation, probably have no idea what psychedelic even means," Manzarek posits in a recent telephone interview. "Hippies are just those flower children, like people think beatniks are all like Maynard G. Krebs. People are missing out on the whole damn thing. It's sad."

For Manzarek, not one to shy away from delicate subjects, the meaning of the psychedelic '60s is implicit in its use of adjective.

"It means ingesting hallucinogenics, the classic mind-altering substances that people have been taking for thousands of years," he says with conviction. "For me, it's all opening the Doors of Perception."

While those doors might have been cracked open 30 years ago, the antidrug tone that prevails today, abetted by an ongoing preference for traditional capitalist values, have all but slammed them back shut. If the ideals of the '60s were but a hazy pipe-dream, Manzarek has little use for the materialistic bender that has come to characterize more recent times.

"Just keep drinking, kids, Ray says sarcastically," railed the keyboardist. "You'll learn a lot from getting blotto. That'll get you nowhere, it's a dead end. There's no joy in being a boozer."

Though a lot of the sensibility of that era was based on youthfulness -- a catchphrase of the times was "don't trust anyone over 30" -- the considerably over-30 Manzarek still sounds like a true believer when musing on an idealistic scenario of the future.

"It's the beginning of the 21st century. We will, of course, enter a new age. It may take another decade to blast away the restraints of our political, religious and sociological structures, but once they're gone we will be able to expand our vision to encompass the whole world. And then we will be able to dance and sing in joy on this planet."

If that prediction sounds a bit out of step with the spirit of this less-than-Aquarian age, you'll still have a hard time convincing Manzarek that those doors aren't ready to swing open again. For him, it's just a matter of waiting out a few "nabobs of negativity."

"We're lying low until we get through the boy bands and the Bush administration. Then we'll be back."

For those intending to tune in, turn on and drive up to the Poconos for the Gathering on the Mountain, here's a rundown of featured mindblowers:

Bernie Worrell & the Woo Warriors: Keyboardist and arranger for George Clinton's Parliament/Funkadelic collective, Julliard-trained Worrell continues to take funk music to weird and wonderful places. 2:30-3:45 p.m.

Colonel Bruce Hampton & the Code Talkers: A true cult figure, Bruce Hampton has been defying rock convention since his days as a Captain Beefheart-inspired provocateur in the notorious (and largely unheard) Hampton-Grease Band. But that didn't stop him from helping found the H.O.R.D.E. tour with more mainstream types John Popper and Trey Anastasio. 4-5:15 p.m.